New business hour delivery requirement for seller-fulfilled shipments

Selling on Amazon FBM
, ,
1

What in the holy #*@! I can NOT believe they went through with mandating this garbage metric. Looks like the end for most of us non FBA sellers.

Hello,

For Amazon Business customers, receiving shipments during operating hours is essential to packages getting received securely and on time, with fewer re-delivery attempts. To help ensure reliable delivery within a business customer’s hours, we’re introducing a new Business Hour Delivery Rate requirement to seller-fulfilled shipments in our US store.

Starting September 30, 2026, you’ll need to maintain a Business Hour Delivery Rate of 90% or higher. This is measured using the existing Business Hour Delivery Rate metric, which tracks the percentage of your seller-fulfilled shipments delivered to Amazon Business customers within their operating hours over a rolling 14-day period.

If your Business Hour Delivery Rate is below 90% on September 30, we’ll notify you and provide recommendations on how to improve. If your rate doesn’t improve by October 30, your seller-fulfilled offers may be deactivated for Amazon Business customers. Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and retail offer eligibility will not be impacted.

Using reliable carriers and setting accurate handling and transit times is the best way to meet the requirement. You can also enable Automated Handling Time, Shipping Settings Automation, and Amazon Buy Shipping as shipments fulfilled using all three of these tools are guaranteed to meet the Business Hour Delivery Rate requirement.

To review your business hour delivery rate, go to Account Health.

For more information, go to Business Hour Delivery Rate.

The Amazon Services team

2

Sadly, it was unavoidable to happen.
My rate is currently 91%, so I’ll be SOL by the Christmas period.

The thing is that I buy all my shipping through Amazon, so Amazon decides what is a valid shipping method, and as I ship limited quantity products, all I ship is either FedEx Ground/Home or UPS Ground. 100% of my orders are shipped with FedEx/UPS Ground.
In other words, it’s not technically possible for it to be below 100% unless, Amazon allows residential addresses to say “we are commercial” and then derriere fornicates sellers.
It’s one of those things that as it can’t be defeated, I won’t even worry about it.

3

I’m at 55% with 63 business deliveries in the window. All of the AI book buying lately has been to business customers.

4

None of those things will stop the USPS from delivering in “non-business hours.” What a bunch of BS.

5

I mean, if they carry this through to the logical end, I would bet that all 3rd party sellers not using FBA will be suspended.

Whichever moron exec that green lit it will get fired, then they’ll do some PR bs to talk about how they love their 3rd party “partners” and try to woo them back. If it goes to this length, I’ll be done w/ them permanently.

6

Where did you find this metric?

7

If you go to Account Health, then click “monitor my performance” at top right, it takes you to the data.

8

Okay, thanks. Mine shows “N/A”.

9

This thread on the crap forum will be interesting to follow. Just posted and has 24 downvotes:

New business hour Amz Thread

10

They are just trying a new method to push us to use AHT, SSA, and Buy Shipping.

11

There are some great replies there.

12

But none of those things have anything to do with when the carrier actually delivers the item.

13

No, but you will be protected from dings to your metrics.

14

So I understand this correctly, offers will be deactivated for “Amazon Business Customers” only, correct?
And having SSA, AHT, Amazon buy shipping will not protect this?

15

I can’t find this metric anywhere, don’t have a “monitor my performance” link on the Account Health screen. Any other suggestions? Thanks.

16

That was the bit I loved.

OH NO – please don’t throw me in the briar patch.

17

We don’t normally sell to business customers, but … when we do … we ask them to be open more than one day a week and for more than one hour.
:smirking_face:

Anybody else remember those “business customers”?

18

You can also find it in the bottom of the fulfillment insight dahsboard

Good to know a couple routes, specially with the new seller central coming any day now

19

And the most reliable route … ask on SAS!
:smirking_face:

20

Ah, I finally found a link to that fulfillment insight dashboard, only to find:

“You don’t have enough Amazon Business shipments to display business hour delivery rate.”

(I have a few but it’s only a 14-day window for this metric so apparently not enough to calculate.)

But I found a “funny” on that page:

“You currently do not have SSA enabled on 0.00% of your SKU’s.”

Versus saying “You currently have SSA enabled on 100% of your SKU’s.” But why should Amazon ever phrase anything to sellers in the affirmative?